The message doesn’t need to be an offer or reward, but those types of notifications will help bring that shopper from outside into your store.

If shopper is in store the notification may encourage them to get something they weren’t planning on getting.

The only downside that I can see is that for Beacons to work ‘bluetooth’ must be enabled on the users phone and the user must first have allowed notifications to be pushed to them.
I don’t personally always have bluetooth on so these notifications would not work for me. Even so, I would still think it’s worthwhile for brands to adapt this new technology as they’re relatively cheap and easy to run.

If brands were to communicate these type of offers, I’m sure loyal customers would turn their bluetooth on.

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You will probably hear me talk about this quite a lot as it’s something I truly believe in and something I think brands often look over in fear they’ll miss their KPI’s.

What is convenience marketing?

Without your customers you are nothing. Convenience marketing puts your customer in the front of the line of all your decisions. Making sure there are no hurdles that customers face when pursuing your business objectives and goals.

Example: Website Checkout Complete

If the goal of your website is to make sales, ask yourself if it’s easy to land on your homepage and complete the check out process? My advice is get your mum to test the site. Someone that most definitely isn’t as close to it as you and someone that is relatively new to your site. Ask them to complete some site goals (assuming these are set up in Google Analytics).

Example: Buy a brown jumper / Join the email list
I would even suggest getting them to test this on desktop and mobile.

If the person testing your site cannot complete those goals in under 5 clicks you’re making life to difficult for the consumer and your site is not convenient enough. In all cases for site conversions, the less clicks the better. We’re all time poor, so the quicker and easier it is the better your sites conversion will be.

Convenientprocedures, products and services are those intended to increase ease inaccessibility, saveresources(such astime, effort[1]andenergy) and decreasefrustration.

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Conclusion:

When making brand decisions always make sure the customer is the first, middle and last thought. If you decide something that is not convenient for your customer then you’ve probably made the wrong decision. Don’t worry you’re not alone, it’s happening everywhere I look.

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I find this old feature is rarely used and I often wonder why. My fashion brands are always looking for new content ideas that are interesting and engaging and I feel it’s right under their noses.

Content Idea:

Taking cues from #flashbackfriday or #throwbackthursday – where users post old photos and memories on Instagram. Could brands use similar thinking to create new, interesting, engaging content for their fans? I think they can.

Example Posts:

Best sellers from past seasons (showing off fashion from the past), getting your community to engage with old trends and showing off how much fashion has changed.

On this day in 1972 our first range was sold. We just love the (product name), maybe this should make a come back!?!(shown off in album or wall post)

Advertisements ran in traditional form (magazines, tvc), showing off some of your favourite and most talked about ads would be of interest to your loyal fans.

Our first spread in Cosmopolitan was released on this day. My how fashion has changed, but we must say we do love our models figure.(shown off in album or all post)

New store openings. Showing off the history and growth of the brand.

On this day X opened and has become one of our leading stores. It’s fair to say it’s changed a lot. Which is of our stores is your favourite?(show shot of before and now).

Further Execution:

Aside from executing on Facebook (using the milestone feature), I would suggest using these stories on Instagram (sharing to Twitter). I would even suggest creating a Pinterest board.

It would be great to either use one of the hashtags above, as they’re widely used, or if you want maybe create one of your own; #brandnamebackintime

Generally when users land on your YouTube page there will not be an aggressive sign up option. Instead the ‘subscribe‘ is tucked away in the right corner. Below is a trick that will have users that you direct to your YouTube page be asked to ‘subscribe‘ as seen in the example below.

All it takes is adding this extra bit of text to the end of your YouTube URL whenever you share it: The below example is forOakley Australia

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You may already be aware of the Twitter changes, but incase you’re not they’re below and they will require all brands to update their page.

These new features are very ‘Facebook’ so you should find them quite familiar. I like the changes and suggest you log into your Twitter if you haven’t already and turn on the ‘new Twitter’.

Customise your header image (1500 x 1500)

Have a larger profile pic (400 x 400)

Highlight your greatest tweets (pin to the top)

See all your Tweets, photos, and videos in one place

Find interesting people to follow.

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I’m more excited about Twitter ads, they’re not yet running in Australia as far as I know, but watch this space. As soon as they are I’ll be sure to give you a big update as they’re easy to set up and target. Super frustrating they’re not available just yet.

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Make your physical event digital by using Instaprint from BREAKFAST. A brilliant way to encourage event goers to Instagram their event experience.

Essentially, your live event which has all the people talking, you now want to encourage them to use your hashtag in their grams to spread your night far and beyond.
This nifty little idea will help get your event goers gramming and sharing.

Event user grams a photo of the event to their Instagram channel using a unique hashtag

Then Instaprint picks up the gram and prints it out for them to take home with them as nice Polaroid style photo.

It’s a fun and unique experience that you can offer your guest.

I contacted them a few years ago to get this out and the costs were quite high. You needed to pay for the device and then pay for their team to fly from NYC to set up the devices and run the night.

It’s a costly exercise but one that would help to push your exclusive event to the masses.

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I cannot stress the importance of this and I can’t believe how poorly this is executed from so many brands around the world.

This would have to be the most basic of marketing, but it gets missed cause it has no bells and whistles and often digital communication teams miss this due to them not having the time or the knowledge to execute it. Below I want to go into some detail of why this is so important and how you can be doing this to better improve your brands digital foot print.

Brands may think they’re doing this, I can tell you, they’re not. Yes they’re responding to direct questions, but they’re missing the ‘gold nuggets’ that’s out there every single day.

I recently sat down with a new bikini brand that’s about to hit Australia and got into a discussion about listening and responding by way of a soft introduction into the new country. The example I used for this is relevant here so I thought I would share.

Listening using the HootSuite platform and geo targeting it to Australia only key terms such as ‘Bikinis’, ‘Holiday’, ‘Summer’, ‘Competition brand names’ etc. These channels will be set up and as a brand which has a presence on Twitter you now have the ability to add value to their conversations.

Example Twitter users are talking about buying bikinis for their Mexico holiday. You now can jump in as the brand and add value to their conversation by showing off your range.
You can take it a step further and really entice a purchase by saying use this code and get 10% off. You don’t want to come across as pushy or to sales driven, so you might first want to join in the conversation with something fun and light, then once they @reply back you can start to form a conversation/relationship and then offer them something for being so nice and friendly.

People love this and appreciate brands going the extra mile to give them something that’s extremely relevant and timely to those people right there and then.

Why Listen:

Everyday there are consumers talking about your brand

Everyday there are consumers talking about the industry your brand is in

Allows brands that haven’t been directly mentioned, to turn a negative experience into a positive one.

Allows brands to find advocates and reward those advocates.

Allows brands to find fantastic user-generated content

Listening allows you to hear what the wider community is saying about your brand, allowing you to learn and adapt what you’re doing on the fly. It’s like doing market research everyday for your brand. The learnings are invaluable.

Why Respond:

Responding illustrates to the digital community that your brand cares about what is being said in the wider community.

Brands can add value to conversations.

Conversations are happening now, so your brand to them at that point is at the highest relevance it can be.

Helps brands become the ‘authority’ in their space.

Tools to Listen and Respond:

Twitter

A fantastic tool that I use a lot is HootSuite, if you don’t have an account with them I suggest signing up and getting one.
This platform also allows you to post to some of your social channels, but a word of advice I would only use this channel for posting and listening and responding in Twitter (always post to Instagram and Facebook natively).

HootSuite allows brands to set up streams to listen and also gives brands the ability to respond. I cannot speak highly enough of this platform and consider this to be a must for all brands. They’re are similar platforms that do this job, but as my personal preference this is the one to get.

Instagram

HootSuite will also pick up Instagrams that have been shared to Twitter, but not everyone shares their grams to Twitter, so I suggest using Statigram, another great tool for listening, responding and also great for Instagram reporting.

Simply search for your keywords and click on the grams that appear to listen and respond.
You will also want to use this platform to respond to your direct @mentions as well. I find it hard to respond to @mentions natively (on the phone), this platform allows you to respond using desktop (much easier). Using Statigram will ensure you don’t miss any direct and indirect mentions.

Facebook

This is done natively and with this, brands need to respond to private messages, wall posts and comments under branded posts.

Polyvore / Pinterest

This is done natively inside those platforms. To listen you need to search for your brand to see if they have been pinned or if sets have been created. If so, responding by way of liking and/or commenting is needed.

Users in these channels appreciate your brand, so you need to add value where you can.

Response Times:

Every channel is different, but as a brand you need to dedicate time each day to complete this extremely important task.
The more channels your brand has an account in, the more listening your brand is required to do each day.

The times below are all during business hours, Mon – Fri 9am – 5pm.
Brands can go above and beyond this and if possible absolutely do it.

My advice is listen and respond, when you get into work, before you have lunch, after you have lunch and before you go home (4 times per day in each channel).

Responding within 2 hours of the initial customer post in all channels

Twitter is all about what’s happening now, so if you’re later than 2 hours generally the moment and conversation has been had and gone. If you’re to respond quicker in any channel, do it in Twitter.

How to handle negative comments in all channels:

All brands will get negative comments and they will come in directly or indirectly. Brands need to acknowledge and respond in a timely manner to all negative mentions. I suggest taking the conversation offline as quickly as you can and resolve there.

Example: Sorry to hear about your most recent experience, please email xxx and we’ll look into this right away for you.

This shows the wider community that you have acknowledged the issue, keeps the angry customer on your side and allows you to solve this privately offline. When solving this offline, know that this conversation could be shared back to the wider community, so choose your words wisely and resolve as quickly as possible.